To countdown to this year’s Halloween, Luke Owen reviews a different horror film every day of October. Up next; the genre re-defining Scream…
For today’s entry of Countdown to Halloween, let’s take a quick detour from Springwood, Ohio and head over to Woodsboro, California. As discussed yesterday, along with Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, Wes Craven’s New Nightmare became the blueprint for a struggling writer to put together a script that would re-invent the slasher genre. It was cool, edgy, witty, self-aware and above all, terrifying.
Originally titled Scary Movie up until the end of the editing process, Scream came out at a time when the slasher movie was more than dead and buried. Over the last week or so, we’ve looked at the dark times of the early 90s and how the sub-genre just wasn’t cutting it anymore (not pun intended) and audiences had grown weary of the tired and formulaic hack and slash romp. Kevin Williamson realised this shift in the generation’s feelings towards cinema and how movies like Reservoir Dogs and Clerks were exciting film lovers with their references to pop culture in between slick and smart dialogue exchanges. He understood that teenagers were aware of the conventions of a horror movie and spun this on its head to create a film that was as smart as the audience thought they were. It took all the rules, broke them and then re-wrote new ones. No one saw it coming and 1996 could not have been a more perfect time for a movie like Scream to come out.
But it wasn’t just Williamson’s script that makes Scream the brilliant movie that it is. What a lot of people forget is that Scream succeeds on being a scary movie as well as a clever piece of self-aware cinema – which is down to the masterful direction from horror legend Wes Craven. Although he originally turned the movie down again and again (as did George A. Romero and Sam Raimi), Craven finally came on board and it was his vision that really hammered home the genius of Williamson’s script. Craven brings these characters to life through some inspired casting choices and his acute sense of how to create tension and scares raises the movie above the standards set by previous slasher efforts. The opening scene of the movie might be incredibly well-written, but it’s Craven’s direction that really makes this 12-minute prologue the nerve shattering experience it is.
After some battles with the MPAA to get the film at an R rating (which they got after Bob Weinstein told the board it was a comedy), Scream was released on December 20th 1996, just 5 days before Christmas. The idea behind the film’s festive release was that Bob Weinstein knew there would be no horror competitors for Scream and that teenagers would flock to see it in order to escape the family movie overhaul. However, the movie did not have the best opening weekend and while it wasn’t a complete failure, it didn’t light up the box office takings either. The 90s slasher hangover was still in full effect and some early reports and reviews were less than favourable towards Craven and Williamson’s slasher revival. But, three little words saved the movie and made it the mega-hit we know today: word of mouth.
Against the odds, the weekend takings for Scream didn’t drop and just kept growing with the word of mouth from cinema goers being extremely positive and the ‘whodunit’ aspect gave the film an almost Psycho-like ‘you’ve got to see it’ vibe. After a slow start, Scream ended up staying in cinemas for whopping 31 weeks and grossed over $100 million.
However, as alluded to in yesterday’s Countdown to Halloween, the success of Scream did bring about a slew of imitators and cash ins.
Certain movies like The Matrix and Transformers have an effect on a studios output for the next few years. And just as Halloween and Friday the 13th inspired studios to spew out clone movies to emulate their success, Scream brought about a plethora of movies that tried to copy its writing style, pop culture references, tone and feel – and not one of them got it right. Whether it was I Know What You Did Last Summer, Urban Legend, Valentine, Jeppers Creepers or Jason X there wasn’t a self-aware slasher movie that could match up to the greatness of Scream. In fact the only one that really came close was science fiction inspired The Faculty, and that was because it was written by Kevin Williamson. And, much like the 80s slasher remakes of the 21st Century, it was because the filmmakers missed the point of what made Scream work.
It wasn’t just the witty and knowing script that made Scream a good film and Craven was good enough of a director to never let the script overshadow the horror of the movie. If you took out the meta aspect of Scream, it would hold up as a good and solid horror. But it was the combination of the script and direction that made it the success it was – and this is what was missing from the imitators. None of them had the style or class, the characters you wanted to see survive to the end or the skill to have pop culture and knowing references without feeling forced and contrived.
After nearly a decade of second rate slasher movies, Scream was the breath of life the sub-genre needed. And despite being to blame for the lame horrors that followed, it’s still a superb movie and should be recognised as one of the all-time greats. The acting is mostly good, the characters are well-written and the movie as a whole understood its audience as well as future audiences. The generation that followed 90s will often find the faults in the 80s classics (and dare say, even laugh at them), but it’s hard to pick holes in Scream – even if it is a firm product of its time.
Luke Owen is one of Flickering Myth’s co-editors and the host of the Flickering Myth Podcast. You can follow him on Twitter @LukeWritesStuff.
Flickering Myth will be presenting a one-night only screening of zombie-comedy Stalled at the Prince Charles Cinema in Leicester Square, London on Novemeber 14th 2013. For more information on where to buy tickets, click here.
Originally published October 29, 2013. Updated November 7, 2019.
